New Delhi: BJP leaders Nitin Gadkari, DV Sadananda Gowda, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Giriraj Singh, Babul Supriyo and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal will be sworn-in as ministers in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet on Friday evening.
Other senior party leaders such as Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Narendra Singh Tomar, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan and Smriti Irani are also likely to join the second Modi government after being its members in its first avatar.
The others tipped to get a ministerial berth include Sadananda Gowda, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Giriraj Singh, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Thawarchand Gehlot, Dilip Ghosh, Jitendra Singh, Mansukh Mandaviya, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Arjun Ram Meghawal and Niranjan Jyoti.
As high-level discussion continued, BJP ally Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut revealed that party Mumbai South lawmaker Arvind Sawant will be part of the Modi ministry. “It is decided that there will be one minister from each ally. Arvind Sawant is Shiv Sena’s pick for minister post in PM Modi’s government,” Sanjay Raut said, according to ANI.
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Sushma Swaraj is also likely to be part of the government.
Among some of the new faces that are likely to be inducted include Prahlad Patel from Madhya Pradesh, Kailash Chowdhry from Rajasthan, Krishna Reddy from Telangana and Suresh Angedi from Karnataka and Raosaheb Danve from Maharashtra.
Gadkari held the portfolio of Road Transport and Highways in Modi's first government and retained his Nagpur Lok Sabha seat in the recently concluded elections.
In the last government, Pradhan, a member of the Rajya Sabha, was Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Gowda was Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation while Badal was Minister of Food Processing. Gowda and Badal were elected in the recent elections.
Naqvi, also a Rajya Sabha member, was Minister of Minority Affairs whereas Babul Supriyo was Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. Giriraj Singh was Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the last Modi government.
Before taking the oath of office, the prospective ministers will meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg here over tea at 4:30 pm, sources said.
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Prime Minister Modi, along with his council of ministers, will take oath as the 15th the Prime Minister of India at 7 pm in the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. President Ram Nath Kovind will administer the oath of office and secrecy at the function.
Several overseas friends of BJP from 15 countries, including the US, Australia, Germany, and the UK, have also been invited.
The PM Modi-led NDA stormed to power winning 352 of the 542 Lok Sabha seats, restricting the Congress tally at 52.
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